Multiple selection in graphical picker, bug fixes, etc.

Good afternoon, everyone!

In the course of developing the next major version of MissionComputer, I've fixed a few bugs that users have found in 4.0.1, so rather than make everyone wait until the more impressive additions are complete, I'm releasing version 4.0.2 now, which includes these fixes as well as a few additional goodies.

New features:

• The graphical resource picker now allows multiple selections.

• The s˙st and spöb editors now select and preserve their sizes and locations on screen more usefully.

• The cicn viewer can now show the colour icon, the black-and-white icon, or the mask, and allows the same choice of backgrounds as the RLE viewer.

• MissionComputer once again checks for updates. Automatic checks can be disabled in Preferences, and happen at most every two days.

Fixes:

• When editing cloaking devices, the oütf editor no longer swaps the values for 'Visible on radar' and 'Drop shields when used' (thanks, Consul Bob).

• The DITL editor no longer garbles resource IDs when running on PowerPC (thanks, Guy).

• The cölr editor now saves numbers related to the main menu correctly (thanks, IT 000).

• The star map editor no longer loses the Government setting of systems containing no planets (thanks, rmx256).

MissionComputer 4.0.2 is available immediately, both from the Ambrosia add-ons directory and from davidarthur.evula.net. It is a download of just over 14 MB, and requires Mac OS 10.3 or later on PowerPC, or Mac OS 10.5 on Intel.

Excellent, downloading now. Nice ad, by the way.

Thanks a ton, your perseverance is greatly appreciated!

@david-arthur, on Nov 20 2008, 06:15 AM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

• The cicn viewer can now show the colour icon, the black-and-white icon, or the mask, and allows the same choice of backgrounds as the RLE viewer.

Interesting. I've just been checking this out and noticed a couple of things:
- The b&w icon for all of Nova's cicns have not been filled in - they're just left white. When viewing this in MC though, they appear black.
- Opening either of Nova's 'alert' cicns throws an out of bounds error in DocWindow:MakeEditor.

While I'm here, I had an idea for a new feature for the plug converter: When converting .rez to Mac, if the file contains a custom icon (icns -16455) then set the custom icon flag. Obviously this would only happen if the file was originally made on a Mac.

Many thanks for multiple selection in the graphical pickers :). Can you make shift/cmd behaviour the same as when in list view (with shift-clicking selecting a whole range of IDs)?

This post has been edited by Guy : 19 November 2008 - 04:56 PM

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

The b&w icon for all of Nova's cicns have not been filled in - they're just left white. When viewing this in MC though, they appear black.

It's possible that the black-and-white icons are being inverted. The new cicn viewer is a very recent development (it represents about a third of the work needed for a full cicn editor), and I didn't have very many of them handy to test with.

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

Opening either of Nova's 'alert' cicns throws an out of bounds error in DocWindow:MakeEditor.

Thanks, I'll see if I can trace it.

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

While I'm here, I had an idea for a new feature for the plug converter: When converting .rez to Mac, if the file contains a custom icon (icns -16455) then set the custom icon flag. Obviously this would only happen if the file was originally made on a Mac.

When I've thought of this before, there's never been a convenient way to handle it, but I'll take another look.

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

Many thanks for multiple selection in the graphical pickers :). Can you make shift/cmd behaviour the same as when in list view (with shift-clicking selecting a whole range of IDs)?

Yes, I do plan to see if I can make this work in a useful manner.

there is a bug you may or may not be aware of. when i create a weapon a RLED and a spin for the RLED and i select the correct graphic for my weapon it doesn't save the change. (Eg) I put in graphic 345 for my weapon sprite and then save if I then open it again it says I don't have a sprite selected.

Edit I am actually running the most recent version of MC

This post has been edited by of doom : 19 November 2008 - 09:07 PM

I have seen something similar throughout almost all of the entry fields. In order for my changes to remain I must click outside of the entry field or hit return after typing. I actually like this feature, because it helps me stay organized and not modify fields accidentally. I suggest just hitting "return" after entering the data and see if it works. I am pretty sure this is the same thing, but I'm not positive.

One thing I noticed in 4.0.1 (I'm not sure about 4.0.2 yet, but you don't have it listed in the fixes) is that the MakeRLE program works great - except when the dimensions of a PICT sprite go above a certain amount. I'm not sure exactly what the amount is, but I worked with one that had dimensions of 3000 by 6000 - the MakeRLE program calculated the size of the 3000 pixel side properly, but calculated 5999 for the 6000 pixel side. I checked and rechecked the size of my image in other programs, and it was indeed 6000. The final result didn't mess anything up in-game - MakeRLE rounded my X and Y grid numbers and just moved the sprite down a little bit each frame, which looked fine since the sprite I was working on was an explosion. Had it been a large ship with turning sprites or an animation I think it could have been a problem, however. This could have been something I did wrongly, but it might be good to check into it to make sure. I'm working on an iMac PPC G5 running OS 10.3.9

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

Opening either of Nova's 'alert' cicns throws an out of bounds error in DocWindow:MakeEditor.

Fixed, thanks. It was a rounding problem affecting icons whose widths aren't evenly divisible by 8.

@guy, on Nov 19 2008, 04:51 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

Can you make shift/cmd behaviour the same as when in list view (with shift-clicking selecting a whole range of IDs)?

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think it might be more intuitive to keep the current behaviour, which resembles that of the Finder (which is the most obvious paradigm for the graphical picker). What do others think?

On to new business:

@of-doom, on Nov 19 2008, 09:06 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

I put in graphic 345 for my weapon sprite and then save if I then open it again it says I don't have a sprite selected.

Is 345 typical of the values you've tried? The wëap resource's Graphic field can only link to spďn resources with IDs between 3000 and 3255 in EV Nova , so that may be your problem. I'll add a help tag drawing the user's attention to the acceptable values.

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 19 2008, 09:55 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

I have seen something similar throughout almost all of the entry fields. In order for my changes to remain I must click outside of the entry field or hit return after typing.

I can't reproduce this. Can you tell me specific fields where it occurs? Also, what sequence of actions cause it to lose the value?

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 19 2008, 09:55 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

One thing I noticed in 4.0.1 (I'm not sure about 4.0.2 yet, but you don't have it listed in the fixes) is that the MakeRLE program works great - except when the dimensions of a PICT sprite go above a certain amount.

No, Make RLE hasn't changed since 4.0.0. I can't think what would be causing this offhand, but I'll take a look. Can you post a sprite for which this error occurs?

I can post a sprite, for sure. I'm not on my own computer right now, but I will post a sprite later.

On the entry fields: I'm not sure about what exact fields it works on and doesn't work on (and since I'm on one of my campus Windows machines right now I can't check), but I know that if I go into the ship editor, for instance, and change the type, number or ammunition count of any weapon (or similar information on the outfit field) then I have to press "return" before closing the ship editor window in order for MC to save my changes. I also must be in the main window (that is, not one of the specific editors, such as ship, weap, etc) in order to save the plug or data file. Neither of these things cause me trouble at all, but I'm just reporting them in case they work differently from what you intended.

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 20 2008, 01:45 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

if I go into the ship editor, for instance, and change the type, number or ammunition count of any weapon (or similar information on the outfit field) then I have to press "return" before closing the ship editor window in order for MC to save my changes.

Okay, good. The weapon and outfit fields for the shďp resource are special cases, since they're column lists rather than independent fields like most others, and it's perfectly understandable that they behave this way.

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 20 2008, 01:45 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

I also must be in the main window (that is, not one of the specific editors, such as ship, weap, etc) in order to save the plug or data file.

Yes, I haven't implemented saving with an editor in the foreground – it will require a little bit of a work-around to get the message back to the main document window, and this hasn't been a priority since it isn't a major inconvenience and very few people have even mentioned it.

@david-arthur, on Nov 21 2008, 03:49 AM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think it might be more intuitive to keep the current behaviour, which resembles that of the Finder (which is the most obvious paradigm for the graphical picker). What do others think?

I think it's necessary since there's no other way to select a large group at once. In Finder you can just drag a selection box over the items you want.
I believe the reason it doesn't work like this in the Finder is because the icons may be unsorted or may even be just a jumble of unarranged icons. If you click on one item and then shift click on another, it may not be clear exactly which items in between should also be selected. In MC this is not an issue since they're always arranged in a grid sorted by ID. IIRC, ResEdit's grid views selected a range when shift-clicking.

This post has been edited by Guy : 20 November 2008 - 03:47 PM

@guy, on Nov 20 2008, 03:42 PM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

If you click on one item and then shift click on another, it may not be clear exactly which items in between should also be selected.

This is the same problem I have in MissionComputer. If you shift-click something that's in both a different row and a different column from what's already selected, should everything between them in ID be selected, or everything between them in a two-dimensional grid?

Illustration to clarify the two possibilities:

ˇ ˇ 1 x x	 ˇ ˇ 1 x ˇ
x x x x x	 ˇ ˇ x x ˇ
x x x 2 ˇ	 ˇ ˇ x 2 ˇ

Resource 1 was already selected, and the user shift-clicked resource 2. Which illustration represents the set of other resources which should become selected?

A Finder-style ability to select by dragging a rectangle may be the ultimate solution, though it would also be more work. I should also mention that I found shift-selection in ResEdit's graphical pickers irritating.

I think ResEdit does the second way but I'd prefer the first way, which makes sense when the items are in order (iPhoto works that way). The idea being you can select exactly the same items with two clicks in the graphical view as you would with the list view.

This post has been edited by Guy : 20 November 2008 - 05:55 PM

I think the descriptive text for the outfit type "Murk Modifier" is misleading. The behavior of the field (whose value I believe MC4.0.2 displays "as-is") is to add the ModVal to the system's murkiness. Thus positive numbers increase murkiness and negative numbers decrease murkiness. However, MC4.0.2 says, "Amount to reduce murk".

@qaanol, on Nov 22 2008, 06:18 AM, said in MissionComputer now updated to 4.0.2:

Thus positive numbers increase murkiness and negative numbers decrease murkiness. However, MC4.0.2 says, "Amount to reduce murk".

Fixed, thanks.

I just encountered a problem with 4.0.1 I never had before... I was just editing random systems I had made and made a planet from within the system... I left the 'galaxy' and then all of the buttons for create new (gov. ship outf wep desc etc) were all gone. There was no way to make a new resource... only edit it. I'm downloading 4.0.2 now so maybe it'll work now 0.0

I took a screanshot so if you want to see it I'll try and upload...

EDIT: Did you change how to create a resource or is the new one messed up too? I have a feeling you probably just moved stuff and I'm being a noobie but where is it??? -.-

EDIT 2: Oh you made it so you can only make a new resource by doing the shortcut??? That seems odd to me... (Apple + k) Did you do this on purpose?

This post has been edited by 1purevengeance1 : 22 November 2008 - 12:20 PM

In 4.0, I made the toolbar in the document window optional: if you still want it, you can turn it on from Preferences or by using the toolbar button on the top right corner of the window. You can perform all the same functions using the Resource menu, or (as you've discovered) with the keyboard shortcuts such as Command-K and Command-I.

I find I would enjoy an "undo" feature when editing dësc resources, identical in function to that of a word-processing application such as TextEdit.

In fact, I'd like an undo that works in any editor, and deals with all text-field changes, selections from drop-down lists, checkboxes, and anything else the user can modify. I presume there would be a lot of coding involved, so I shan't ask you for such an addition. I merely note that I would use it.

And I second the desire to be able to save from any editor window.

Bug report:

Status: Repeatable.

System: OS X 10.4, running MC 4.0.2 under Rosetta.

Method: From outfit editor when outfit has no description, click "Edit Description..." button to create description. Add text to description. Close outfit editor window. Attempt to close description editor window. Error occurs. Click "OK". MC exits. Description has not been created in the file.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 23 November 2008 - 11:38 PM

There is a 'Revert' option, which is pretty handy in lack of undo functionality. Though for descs, undo would be very useful indeed.